When he didn’t elaborate – and she was shocked he’d admitted as much as he had – she cleared the sudden catch in her throat and said, “Do you miss it?”
“Every day.”
The wind out here, in the wild, had a way of constantly sighing and whispering, threading through the tree trunks in cool tendrils.
It slipped between them now; Katya imagined it eased the strain of admission.
“I was never very good,” she said, because she thought she needed to offer her own admission, “but it was fun.” Back when she’d been just a girl, on the swept-clean floor of a barn, the rest of the village gathered under lantern light, precious oil burned so that they could drink, and smoke, and laugh, and twirl one another inexpertly around. Just so they’d have something to look forward to. Stolen moments of joy.
It surprised her when he straightened away from the tree and offered her his hand, palm-up, moonlight cupped in the little hollow there. The lines were deep, holding shadows, the calluses rough to the eye, even in the dark.
“What?” she asked.
The light caught his teeth as he grinned, a fast gleam. “You’re only as good as your dancing instructor, and you’ve clearly never danced with anyone as good as me.”
A startled laugh tickled up her throat. “You don’t have to.”
His smile slipped a little. “I miss it, remember?” Quiet, rough, self-conscious.
How could she refuse that?
She laid her hand in his and immediately his fingers closed around hers and he stepped out into a clear space between the tree trunks, whirling her along. She let out a startled gasp, afraid she’d fall, but he swung her into place in front of him, other hand landing, steadying, on her hip.
And they were dancing, just like that.
“Oh,” she said, after a moment, following his feather-light steps across the ground as best she could. Because he knew the steps, yes, and executed them well, but he obviously wasn’t trained as a ballroom dancer. His movements were more ethereal than that.
“Ballet, yes,” he said, as if reading her mind, smile wry…and also proud. “Until I was eighteen.”
“You waltz very well,” she said, a little breathless with the speed and smoothness of his turns, trying valiantly to keep up.
“So do you.”
She made a dismissive sound.
“I never lie about dancing,” he said, seriously.
And for the first time in a long time, a real, bright, from-the-heart smile broke across her face, almost painful because the muscles there were so unused to the expression.
He smiled back, and suddenly he was handsome, and not frightening at all. What a life he might have had, if not for the war, if not for their damnable government.
What a life they all might have had.
He spun her out one last time with a flourish, reeled her in, and dipped her. Her stomach gave a little flip and she grabbed tight to his arm for balance, but she was proud that she didn’t trip or make too big a fool of herself.
He righted her carefully, made sure she was steady, and then stepped back. His smile began to fade immediately, but there were lingering traces of warmth in his face, eyes sparkling.
“Thank you,” he said, quietly, and she knew he meant it.
She curtsied, fingers pinched at the edges of an imaginary skirt.
“Thank you, sir.”
She heard a sound off to the right, a quiet rustling.
Kolya glanced that way and said, “Ah. I think you’ll be alright to walk back.” He bowed and turned away.
Her confusion lasted only a moment before a white-faced, black-clad figure stepped out from behind a tree and approached her.
Nikita.
Her cheeks were already warm from dancing, but she felt them grow warmer. She reached to tuck her hair back, errant strands that had escaped her braids. Her heart started to knock in a way that it hadn’t when she was dancing with Kolya. It had been exercise, before, but now her pulse pounded for another reason entirely, one she wasn’t sure she liked.
He wasn’t smiling, but his expression was soft. He drew to a halt in front of her and together they listened to Kolya walked back to the fire, and then Ivan’s loud greeting as he rejoined the others.
“Sometimes,” Nikita said, low, “when he thinks no one else is around at the office, he takes off his boots and goes through his old positions.” He finally smiled. “I haven’t seen him do it in a while.”
“Oh,” she said, nervous suddenly, feeling, for some reason, like he was complimenting her. She would have blushed if she wasn’t doing that already.
“Thank you for being kind to him.”
“Why would you thank me for that?”
His smile twisted, grew sad. “We aren’t the sort of men who inspire kindness in those around us. We don’t receive it often.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him of course you don’t. Every Russian knew what the long black coats and black fur hats with the hammer and sickle represented, and not even the most loyal to the Communist Party held an ounce of love for the Cheka.
But she’d softened toward them at this point, seeing them as men first, and Chekists second. Dangerous. But unavoidable.
“You don’t like what you do,” she said, and it wasn’t a guess so much as something she’d come to know.
He shrugged. Glanced away.
“Then why do you do it?”
He snorted, eyes coming back, look saying really? “I do what I have to so that I can–” He caught himself, biting his lip a moment.
“Serve your country?” she guessed.
He shook his head. Said down to his boots: “So I can stay alive long enough to save it, maybe.” He breathed a humorless laugh. “That sounds incredibly arrogant.”
“Save it from the Nazis?”
“It needed saving long before the Nazis crossed the borders.” He sent her a level look…touched with fear. Just a flicker in his eyes. “Nicholas wasn’t even tsar anymore, and they dragged his children from their beds and shot them all in cold blood. Slaughtered them. What sort of government does that?”
It all slotted into place, then. She thought it did, anyway. She sucked in a breath.
His look dared her to challenge him. There, I finally told you, it said. What do you think now?
“My father,” she started, careful, “always said that sometimes you had spill the blood of oppressors. But,” she rushed to add when his eyes flared, “this, Communism, is worse than anything the tsars ever did. And what they did to the Romanovs was wrong. I do believe that.”
He let out a breath, visibly relieved.
“But it’s more than that to you, isn’t it?” she said. “It’s personal. You’re a White.” And now that she said it, it made so much sense.
He leaned in close, suddenly, in her face, his breath hot. “If you go running back to base and tell anyone–”
“I won’t. I would never.”
Not even the owls dared to breach the silence that descended then. Her heartbeat was loud as artillery fire in her chest, rushing through her ears. Her pulse knocked so hard she didn’t think she could have run away, or ducked, or even brought a hand up to shield her face if she needed to, all her energy focused on not passing out from the sheer force of her thumping heart.
But she didn’t need to do any of those things.
Nikita let out a shaky breath and leaned back from her, reaching to wipe a hand down his face. She heard the rasp of his bristly chin against his palm. “It’s going to get me – get all of us – killed one day. What’s one more admission, huh?”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she repeated.
He cocked his head to the side, studying her. “Do you think me a traitor?” There was just enough moonlight, and his head was tilted at just the right angle, that she could see his pulse pounding in the hollow of his throat, a rapid flutter in the silvered gloaming.
“I…no. Not really.” She didn’t tell him that, in truth, knowin
g he wasn’t loyal to the state – to the black-clad monsters he represented – eased some last bit of worry inside her. She frowned, though. “You’re pretending to be a Chekist.”
“Yes.”
“All of you?”
“Yes.”
A beat passed, and she let that sink in. “But the people you kill – that’s not pretend. That’s real.”
His jaw clenched, shadow leaping in the side of his face. “We’re not like the others. Raping women and children. Killing just for fun.” He spat the words, disgusted. “We collect the things we’re sent to retrieve, and we only kill when ordered to. Someone would kill those people anyway – better a quick, clean death than the torture someone else would inflict.”
“That’s a convenient way of looking at it.”
“It’s also true.”
And…it was. She guessed. Who knew. Fuck everything.
“You could have joined the war effort as a nurse. A secretary. Why become a sniper? A soldier?”
And here was her ugly truth: “Because I’m angry all the time,” she said, without any remorse. “If I can’t kill the men who took my family away, I’ll kill every other Nazi stupid enough to walk into my sights.” She was breathing hard by the end, and her throat hurt when she swallowed. But her eyes were dry.
Ivan’s laugh floated toward them from the fire, loud and delighted.
Katya tightened her arms across her middle and shivered from a sudden chill. “So,” she said.
“So.”
It was quiet a moment, and then he said, quietly, “My mother was a part of Alexandra’s court. One of her maids of honor.”
Surprised, Katya blurted, “Really?”
“Really. She had to change her name, hide who she really was, take a factory job.” His smile was pained. “When I was a boy, she always came home smelling of cologne. I knew she didn’t like what she did, but I didn’t understand what that meant until I was older. Her hands” – he turned his own over and studied the moonlight that pooled in them – “were cracked and bloody from the cold; there was always machine grease under her nails. But that was just hard work – that wasn’t like the bruises on her arms. Her throat.” He touched his own, reflexively, gaze going somewhere beyond her left shoulder.
“I saw her once,” he continued, “getting out of the bath. We rented a room in another family’s flat – Pyotr’s family, actually – and everyone was always on top of one another. I saw the bruises, and they were blue and shaped like fingers. I didn’t know what they meant, then. But when I was sixteen I finally worked it out of her that it was her foreman. Forcing her. Every day after her shift ended.” He was speaking through his teeth, now. “He gave her an extra loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese sometimes. Food she brought home for me, so I could grow ‘big and strong,’ she said. She had three miscarriages, and I think she did it to herself, somehow. I…” He shook his head. “She didn’t want his babies, and I don’t blame her. I.” His hands curled into fists, and his eyes came to hers, suddenly, fever-bright. “When I was sixteen, and she finally told me, I went down to the factory after hours, and I beat him to death, slammed his face into his own desk until his skull split open like a melon.
“He owed an officer money, and I was still standing over the body, bloody up to my elbows, when the Cheka walked into the office.”
She took a deep breath.
“They congratulated me. Asked if I wanted to join. I had a skill, they said. And no one refuses the chance to join. So.”
Katya exhaled slowly, feeling shaky inside, like she hadn’t eaten yet. “So,” she repeated.
“I didn’t come out here intending to tell you all that,” he said, a bit awkward.
The internal shakiness intensified, a shiver along her bones and veins and nerves. “Why did you come out here?” she asked, voice unsteady.
The smile he gave her was different, wry curves in the corners, bashful almost. “I. Um. Well.”
“Oh,” she said, understanding. Felt her blush return, warmer than before.
“But,” he said, shifting his weight back and forth. “I. Well…it doesn’t matter.” He started to turn away.
But she could tell that it did matter to him. And though her heart raced with a frightening mix of fear and anticipation, his unexpected awkwardness flattered her. Any other man might have grabbed her and demanded what he wanted. Respect – regard as a person, and as a woman – might have been the most basic of expectations, but in her short life of greed, and violence, and war, and violation, it felt heavy and important. Touching.
She grabbed at his sleeve. “Nikita.” She thought it was the first time she’d said his name aloud, and it seemed to affect him, the way he went still, and then slowly turned back to face her. “Thank you for telling me all of that,” she said, meaning it. And then, because she felt compelled to reassure him in some physical way – and because she needed it, too – she stood up on her tiptoes and circled her arms around his neck in a careful hug.
A more experienced woman might have kissed him – and maybe that’s what he was expecting. But though she’d been subject to horrors, she’d never learned how to kiss properly, and, self-conscious, she pressed her face into the shoulder of his coat, hiding her face. It smelled of the woods, and campfire smoke, and a whiff of cordite. Wolf. And of man, something low and spicy that belonged just to him.
He kept still a moment, and then his arms closed around her, strong and warm. Comforting.
She felt his face against her hair.
“We should go back before it gets any colder,” he urged, voice quiet, not wanting to break the spell.
“Yeah.”
The warmth of the embrace lingered, though, even after they separated and walked back to camp hand-in-hand, his fingers finally sliding away from hers when they entered the fire’s ring of light.
21
SOLDIERS OR SERVANTS
“How long are we going to be out here?” Feliks asked two mornings later. A good question.
Nikita wanted a bath, badly, and he tried to tell himself it had nothing to do with the remembered feel of Katya’s face against his shoulder, the urge to have her do it again…and for him to smell like soap when she did. He also wanted a bed; the cold bunkroom back at the base was starting to sound heavenly.
He couldn’t complain about the food, though. Fresh game roasted over the fire was far preferable to SPAM and cafeteria slop. Sasha, who had no doubt been a talented hunter before, had become successful in a way that was uncanny, and inhuman.
But Nikita knew that they were out here for reasons besides teaching Sasha how to take down stags with his bare hands.
Philippe lifted his head from his breakfast, licked a bit of rabbit grease from the corner of his mouth, and glanced around their circle, gaze cautious. He knew what Nikita was thinking, and his face took on that careful expression he wore whenever he told them something he thought they didn’t want to hear. “Right then.” He wiped his hands on the bit of rag he’d spread across one knee – because he was the kind of asshole who used a napkin in the middle of the woods – and cleared his throat.
“As you’ve all probably guessed,” he said. “It was important that Sasha meet his wolves on their turf, and have a chance to learn how to work together with them as a pack. It’s been a successful endeavor, I think we can all agree.” He looked at Sasha almost proudly.
Sasha, by contrast, was staring off through the trees, humming quietly under his breath and scratching the omega wolf behind the ears, unconcerned.
“Get to the point,” Nikita prompted.
“Very well. I’ve told you that I can see things that are coming. Not distinctly, and not exactly. But I do know that battle is coming to Stalingrad. It will be long, and it will be brutal. It will be chaos…and chaos is always a very good time in which to accomplish extraordinary things.”
Everyone around the fire sat up straight.
Katya dropped the rabbit leg in her hand; it tumbled to the pine needles
and one of the wolves slunk in to gobble it up unobtrusively.
Sasha had turned a narrow-eyed look on the old man. “You mean–”
“Take the city,” Philippe said.
“Christ,” Ivan said. “Are you serious? He’s serious, isn’t he?”
“This is what you’ve all wanted,” Philippe argued, spreading his hands to include all of them. “You want to take down the Bolsheviks, well, it starts with a city, my friends. And then another city follows, and then another.”
Katya, white-faced, said, “Generally, when someone overthrows a government, they have their government planning to replace it.”
“Quite right, my dear. And there will be one, but all of us here are soldiers or servants. Not leaders, to be sure.”
“Hey,” Feliks protested.
“Your master,” Nikita guessed, a grim sort of dread settling in his belly. “You want to wake him up and put a crown on his head, don’t you?”
Philippe grinned at him. “And what’s wrong with that? He’s more devoted to the Romanovs than even you, my dear captain.”
Nikita snorted. “Who is he?”
But he knew…in some way. An awful, crawling sort of certainty. The sort of thing that he’d suppressed because it was too terrible to consider.
His hand went to his pants pocket, the hard, cool shape of the bell there, a talisman that was proof of what the old man was about to say.
“You haven’t guessed, yet?” Monsieur Philippe asked, smiling – always smiling, damn him. “The most famous of Russian vampires. My master, and now Sasha’s. Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin.”
~*~
Night before last, Kolya had pulled Nikita aside before bed, when the others were settled down, and the fire had been doused. Only the barest hint of moonlight had lit his face, his eyes shining like onyx in his shadowed face. But Nikita had been able to read his disquiet well enough.
“You told her,” Kolya had said, and it hadn’t been a question.
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